Scope and Content

The collection covers Bartlett's scientific and professional work. It comprises notebooks, a small amount of correspondence, and drafts and notes for lectures, addresses and papers; many are written on the back of undergraduates' essays or examination scripts, and very few are dated. The collection includes notebooks of Bartlett's early experiments on memory and association tests, 1914-1917 (A.4; A.6-A.9; A.11). There is no biographical material as such, but B.86 contains an autobiographical account of Bartlett's early life and time in Cambridge up to World War I.

A. Notebooks, A.1 - A.42, c. 1906-1930

B. Lectures, Addresses, Reports, B.1 - B.88, c. 1912-1964

C. Publications, C.1 - C.32, 1927-1966

D. University of Cambridge, D.1 - D.5, c. 1943-1961

Administrative / Biographical History

Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (1886-1969); B.A., 1st class, in Philosophy, University of London, 1909; M.A., London, 1911, special distinction in Sociology and Ethics. Bartlett attended St. John's College, Cambridge, 1911-1914, obtaining a 1st Class in the Moral Sciences Tripos, and became Assistant Director of the Psychological Laboratory, Cambridge. He was made Reader in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge, 1922, and Director of the Psychological Laboratory, 1922-1952. He was Editor of the British Journal of Psychology, 1924-1948, and First Professor of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge, 1931-1952. In 1932 Bartlett was elected to the Royal Society. He was made C.B.E. in 1941, and received the Baly Medal and the Huxley Medal in 1943. He was knighted in 1948.

Conditions Governing Access

Open for consultation by holders of a Reader's Ticket valid for the Manuscripts Reading Room.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Dr D.J. Bartlett, 1975.

Note

Description compiled by Robert Steiner, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives.